Recovery
by You'reMyKindOfTrouble
Summary: "Carol?" Beth asked uncertainly. "Yeah?" Carol looked over the shelf at her. "You love him, right?" The question floored her for a minute. "Of course I do… Absolutely." Beth nodded. "Does he ever scare you?" "Never." Carol said firmly. Whatever happened to Beth before they found her, she wasn't telling. A discussion between her and Carol, however, sheds a little


**I posted this quite a while ago on ninelives but forgot to post it here... This was pretty much just a quick brain-blurt to have a break from 'Comfort'. I am (obviously, after that premier... Eeeeep!) quite the Caryl shipper but I like the other relationships that these two life-ruiners form with other people... This is like a Beth/Carol friendship thing.**

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><p>Mr. Jensen had been in his eighties but fairly robust, cheerfully helping to shell peas or entertaining the children whenever his arthritis would allow him to. The night he died, he'd asked for a beer with his dinner and sat up late, telling stories of his life before the turn and laughing at jokes the other adults told. He'd eventually struggled to his feet from the chair someone had found him and begun to shuffle off to his house. One of the people they'd met before they found the farm, Janine, had taken him by the arm and guided him to his bed, before returning to the group of twenty or so adults and wishing them goodnight. After that, they had all wandered off to their own beds, in preparation for the early morning and busy day that would come.<p>

Everyone was sitting in the courtyard formed by the three barns within an hour of the sunrise the next morning, except Mr. Jensen.

Carol was helping Beth and Margaret serve up breakfast to those who were ready to eat. The outdoor kitchen consisted of the fire pit, the brick oven they'd built, and the bench top with an industrial-sized sink and drying rack built in. The bench was covered by a roof suspended by poles to keep both the rain and the sun off those on kitchen rotation, and there were a range of stands which could be placed over the fire to hold pots and pans. The pump was situated near the bench, and produced clean, fresh water for cooking and drinking. This morning's breakfast was a poached egg on a thick slab of home-made bread. Their laying hens were productive, but free-range, and as a result they had made a game for the children to find as many eggs as they could in the orchard or around the buildings.

"I'm gonna take this to Mr. Jensen." Beth said once the rush was over, holding up a plate with the egg they'd set aside for him on it.

It wasn't until she'd set off that Carol remembered she socks she'd mended for him. She'd brought them out with her because she was planning on passing them to whoever was taking his breakfast over, and she briefly considered calling Beth back. She changed her mind when Daryl put his plate in the sink and pressed a quick kiss to her temple.

"Come for a walk?" She suggested. "I've got to take Mr. Jensen his socks."

"With an offer like that, how can I say no?" He snickered. "Such a romantic."

She rolled her eyes. "Maggie!" She called. "Can you keep Caleb for a minute?"

Maggie was entertaining Caleb and her son Rory in the shade, and quickly yelled back that she didn't mind.

Daryl waited until they were out of sight before he took her hand in his and kissed her knuckles. She gave him a wink and they continued to walk towards the cluster of farmhouses. As they walked, they discussed the run planned for the afternoon.

"I ain't happy about you comin'." He said.

She squeezed his hand. "It's safer out there than it used to be. You know that."

"Yeah," He admitted. "But it still ain't safe."

"Daryl, I know what I'm looking for, I know where to find it, and I have you watching my back. I will be fine." She kissed his cheek.

"Rick weren't sure either. Said I might be so busy watchin' your ass I'd forget about everyone else's."

"I'd hope it would only be my ass." She teased.

He swatted her backside with a smirk.

They rounded the corner of a house, usually occupied by Sasha, Bob, Tyreese, and Margaret, and saw Beth walking maybe a hundred metres ahead. She skipped up the steps to Mr. Jensen's front door, plate in hand, and knocked.

As they neared, they saw her cock her head and heard her call out to him. She froze and the plastic plate clattered to the porch. She yanked her knife out of its sheath and reached for the door handle. Daryl and Carol looked at each other for a moment, aghast. After patting Carol's hip to make sure she had her knife, Daryl took off sprinting for the girl. Carol raced after him.

They were still twenty metres away when she jerked the door open and Mr. Jensen's walker lurched at her. Without a pause, she swung her knife up and drove it through the temple, and the walker flopped towards her. She spun it to the side, and it hit the porch with a thunk as Daryl leapt up the stairs. Carol arrived a couple of seconds after him, jogging rather than running now that the danger had passed.

Beth was standing over the body, breathing hard. She looked about ready to cry. "He must'a died during the night." She said in a wobbly voice.

Daryl hummed in agreement whilst Carol ducked around behind him and hugged the tearful young woman.

"I guess we should take him inside, cover him up. We'll have the burial straight away." Carol said.

"I'll go get started diggin'." Daryl offered. He felt deflated. Mr. Jensen had been a kind old soul. "Beth… Ya did good." He nodded and turned to leave.

Carol helped Beth heave the body inside, out of the sun that was promising a hot day. Beth closed his eyes and folded his hands across his chest, and they left him lying under a sheet on the linoleum floor.

By this point, Beth had her emotions firmly under control and strode out next to Carol, dry-eyed. They could see a few people out digging near the wall, next to the other graves they'd had to make. There were five, now six; proof that life had been kind to them on the farm.

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><p>"Mr. Jensen- Does anyone know what his actual name was?" Rick asked, causing a ripple of laughter to spread through the congregation. "Nobody? Alright, then. Mr. Jensen was a real member of this community, despite his age. He contributed a lot and he was never short of a story to tell. We'll all miss him dearly, but we need to keep moving at the same time." Everyone nodded somberly.<p>

"He was good with the kids." Carol added.

"He never complained, even when the rest of us did." Said Daniel. "He was with us from the start and never weighed us down."

"He was a nice guy, even if he did take twice as long as everyone else to do just about everything." Glenn quipped. Maggie swatted him.

Everybody started to drift away, anxious to complete the outdoors chores before the sun became too fierce. Daryl lingered with Carol and Beth after everyone else had left, and laid a hand on the cross that stood in the freshly-turned dirt.

Silent respects paid, he turned to Beth. He and Carol had discussed her skill with a knife, and she always had a list of things for people who went on runs. For some reason, Beth had never even been a candidate to go outside the farm walls, but her display that morning had given them an idea.

"Hey, Beth." He said. "How d'you feel 'bout goin' on a run?"

"Me?" She frowned.

"Naw, the other Beth." He deadpanned.

She made a face as Carol laughed, then shrugged. "Are you sure?"

He shrugged. "You're good with a knife. Need someone to watch our backs. Already talked it through with Glenn and Bob."

"I guess so…" She trailed off hesitantly.

Carol patted her hand. "Come find us at twelve. We'll be back in time for dinner, all going well."

Beth glanced nervously at Daryl. "You're coming, right?" She asked Carol.

There was a thin pause whilst Carol thought about the oddness of the question and loaded look. "Of course." She replied. Beth headed back to the barns to pick out the weapons she intended to take from the stall where they were kept.

"That was weird." Daryl supplied.

"It was." Carol confirmed.

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><p>The mall was empty, eerily so. Nevertheless, Glenn and Daryl heaved rolls of chicken wire and wooden posts onto large trolleys, which Bob and Carol pushed outside to load into the horse truck they'd brought. Beth stood at the entrance to the ground floor, a knife at each hip and a rifle in her hand. At one point, Daryl, drenched in sweat and flushed from the heat, asked her to switch places, so Daryl took the rifle and Beth went around the ground floor stores, gathering packets of seeds and soaps, shampoos and tampons. She also collected a few plastic rubbish bins, and tubs that could be used for laundry or dishes. Carol and Daryl pushed the trolley and loaded the truck, leaving Glenn and Bob to clear the rest of the hardware store. The truck was full of bags of cement powder, nails, coils of wire and plastic piping. Most of it was construction materials, but what had once been the groom's sleeping quarters above the cab was full of hard-wearing clothing, soap, pens and papers, and hiking or work boots for almost everyone. Glenn had already done a sweep of the mall on the last run with Maggie, Rick, David and Jonathan and had spied a record player. Maggie had cooed over it and given him a list of Beth's favourite records for him to find on the next run. With Bob's help, he'd hidden it and the records at the very front, covering it with the bags of clothing.<p>

Carol had caught them at it, and agreed to help conceal it until they had an opportunity to present it.

Beth had been off ever since they'd quite literally stumbled across her and the group she was with in a darkened hunting store. Maggie had tried to talk to her about it and hadn't been able to get any information other than "Maggie, I'm okay!" Carol had let her cry on her shoulder more times than she could keep track of, but all she had gotten were mute head shakes and more tears.

If they had to waste valuable space in the truck with frivolous items just to make Beth smile, then so be it.

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><p>They were in the pharmacy, digging out painkillers and antiseptics and sticking plasters. Daryl and Glenn were in the next shop, looking for dried foods that hadn't spoiled. Bob stood between the stores, keeping watch.<p>

"Carol?" Beth asked uncertainly.

"Yeah?" Carol looked over the shelf at her.

"You love him, right?"

The question floored her for a minute. "Of course I do… Absolutely."

Beth nodded. "Does he ever scare you?"

"Never." Carol said firmly. "What's happening, sweetheart?"

"Nothin's happened," Beth shrugged. She glanced down shyly before she met Carol's eyes. "It's just…" She picked at the peeling paint of the shelf. "You know what? Never mind."

"Beth." Carol caught her gaze. "What's wrong?"

"It ain't important." Beth evaded her.

"Beth." Carol insisted.

"Your husband used to beat on you, right?" Beth blurted.

Carol hesitated for a moment. "He did." She said evenly.

"How bad?" The blonde girl asked falteringly.

Carol placed her hands on the shelf with deliberate care and shrugged at her over the top of the display. "Badly." She said simply. "And often."

"Did he have a bad temper?"

"The worst. He'd get angry over tiny things and beat the hell out of me." She admitted. "I thought I loved him, at the start… Before he started hitting me. By the time Sophia started school, I hated him with everything I had."

"But you stayed with him? Even though you hated him?" They stood, separated by the empty shelf, all pretense of scavenging abandoned. Beth was looking at her with apology in her gaze, big blue eyes luminous in her pale face, surrounded by a halo of escaped blonde hair. Carol was astounded by the sweetness of the girl, despite whatever she'd suffered before meeting the group they'd discovered her with.

"I was afraid of him more than I hated him."

"Oh, Carol. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have even brought it up." Beth backtracked. "I just figured you could tell me-" She shrugged.

"I cut all my hair off one day," Carol confided. "So he couldn't grab me by it. He was furious. Absolutely livid… He never worked out it was because I hoped I'd disgust him enough that he'd leave me alone." Carol made a nervous face. "Am I telling you too much?"

"Not if you want to tell me." Beth replied. "Did it work?"

"Mostly. Except when he'd come piss-drunk in a tizz about the fact that I was fucking the plumber or the mechanic or whoever it was that week and-" She stopped herself. "Well." She finished, a little lamely.

Beth blinked at her.

"What?" Carol said lightly.

"Don't think I've heard you swear before." Beth said, a hint of nervous laughter in her voice.

"Daryl's influence." Carol tittered.

"But none of that… You never thought… I mean, you were never scared?" Beth returned her attention to the flaking paint. "That Daryl might be the same?"

"Beth, honey!" Carol cooed, coming around the end of the shelf to cup Beth's face in her hands. She thumbed her cheek gently before easing her in for a hug. "People like that, people that like hurting people? They're not normal." She said firmly. "And you can see them a mile off."

"You didn't." Beth argued, then looked mortified. "I'm sorry, that ain't what I meant!"

"No, I understand." Carol squeezed her fingers. "You learn to see them. Experience teaches you that. You could pick someone like that out of a crowd, I'll bet." She probed gently.

"I don't want to talk about it…" Beth said feebly. "I know none of them are like that," She flicked her head towards the door. "But I'm scared of all of them."

"Oh, baby…" Carol rubbed her arm soothingly. "It won't last forever. I think we've got everything we came for, so we may as well head back home, hmm?"

Daryl caught Carol by snagging her belt loop with his finger as she left the pharmacy.

"Any luck?" He asked.

"We got a whole lot of antibiotics and vitamins… There wasn't much else, really." She replied, smiling at him as he kissed her knuckles. His eyes flicked questioningly from her to Beth. "Beth, honey, can you take this?" She held out her bag. Beth took it and went to help Glenn and Bob pack their most recent finds into the truck. "What's wrong?"

"Overheard th'tail-end of your conversation."

"Oh." She said delicately.

"That asshole deserved worse than he got." He growled. She tugged lightly on his hand to get him walking and wrapped her arm around her waist. He threw his arm over her shoulder but his fist was clenched so tightly that his knuckles had turned white. She turned her head and kissed his wrist where the tendons were standing out under his skin and he nudged her nose with his thumb, making her laugh.

"I beat his head in with a pickaxe." She reminded him. "I'm not sure how much worse he could've got."

"Wish I'd done somethin' sooner." He admitted.

"I was dependent on him. Even if you'd tried I wouldn't have done anything."

"Maybe." He said, softening at her reassurances. "Y'shouldn't have had to go through that though. Y'reckon… What happened to Beth out there? Somethin' similar?"

She sighed heavily. "Probably. It's awful; she's such a sweet little thing… But she's getting better, so stop worrying." She kissed his hand again and he growled into her hair.

"Ugh." Glenn rolled his eyes. "Just get in the damn truck already!" He teased.

Daryl flipped him off but climbed up into the cab, reaching down to help Carol up and letting her squeeze in between him and the door.

"Everybody set?" Bob asked from the drivers' seat.

The elderly truck grumbled to life and they turned towards the highway, eagerly anticipating the dinner that would be awaiting them by the time they arrived.

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><p><strong>Mad props to everyone who bothered to read to the end!<strong>

**Reviews are, as always, super appreciated! **


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